Roman shield

[Lucius Duccius Rufinus]

On the matter of gladiators and their ability to rise to the top of the heap etc, I think a couple of things should be remembered.

Firstly, gladiators were highly trained and thus expensive to hire out for shows, meaning that it would have been in very few people's interests to have them killed, and in fact a close study of some surviving equipment shows that it was well designed to protect the wearer very well, whilst at the same time allowing for exciting visual spectacle. Most of those killed in the arena would have been convicted criminals, some of whom might have been faked up as pretend gladiators in order to be dispatched by actual gladiators. Actual gladiator deaths were probably uncommon.

Secondly, although we know that gladiators could arrange for people to bet on them and collect the winnings on their behalves, enabling some to grow wealthy enough that they could buy their freedom and set up their own gladiator schools, all of the gladiators at the gladiator barracks in Pompeii, presumably including any who were doing well at saving up for better things, were chained up for the night and were unable to escape the effects of the eruption after whoever had chained them up for the night failed to unchain them to let them escape, showing that although they were highly trained and expensive entertainers, they were definitely not free to do as they pleased.

Crispvs

Ok i understand your first point, and i know that alot of gladiators wouldnt have been killed in the arena's unlike the hollywoodized thumbs up / thumbs down banter.... however my point was more that like boxers and athletes of today they still wanted to WIN! which means they would have modified their equipment i'm sure to some extent, extra armour, different materials to make their swords lighter, better balanced, extra / less protection depending if they wanted to be heavily armoured or agile, i'm not saying ALL gladiators would have had this privilage, but surely the "star" gladiators of most gladiator schools would have had access to equipment a new gladiator would not??

and yes again point taken about the pompiian evidence